Florida has the highest rate of emergency room visits for kids seeking nontraumatic dental care, and the crisis is getting worse. As more families lose or scale back insurance coverage, and as state Medicaid officials “disenroll” families, preventative dental care gets out of reach for more children. It’s a problem that leaves medical staff frustrated and kids in pain, since emergency rooms are ill equipped to treat dental emergencies and often send patients home with little more than an ice pack and painkillers. We discuss what options are on the table and how the state’s new fluoride policies could affect the problem.

Guest: Dr. Frank Catalanotto, founder of Floridians for Dental Access, former dean at the University of Florida College of Dentistry

Stepping up

After enduring what she describes as an early life defined by abuse, Desiree Jones turned her experience into a path forward for others. The founder of Step-by-Step 4 Help Foundation is now a licensed therapist and offers mental health counseling, mentorship, skills training and housing stability assistance to disadvantaged individuals in the city’s urban core. The group was recently recognized in LISC Jacksonville’s Community Development Awards. We discuss what the award means for the foundation and how its work epitomizes the grassroots strategies promoted by LISC.

Guests:

• Desiree Jones, founder and president, Step-by-Step 4 Help Foundation
• Dr. Irvin DePedro Cohen, executive director of LISC Jacksonville

To the moon and back

April was a busy month for space exploration, as NASA’s Artemis II completed a successful 10-day voyage around the moon, becoming the first crewed flight of the space agency’s Orion spacecraft. It’s also a busy time for stargazers. Currently, the Leo Triplet, a constellation made up of three interacting galaxies, is overhead. We break down the science of how these galaxies produce so-called “rogue stars” and discuss what we’ve learned from the first crewed space flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17.

Guest: Eddie Whisler, director of planetarium and outreach, Museum of Science & History